Wear and Tear 



fS%"" 



SECOND OOPY. 
ISS3. 




LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



Chap........ Copyright Xo......._ 

Slielf..i.O.(9. 5" 

isM 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



Wear and Tear 



OR 



HINTS FOR THE OVERWORKED 



BY 

S. WEIK MITCHELL, M.D. ? LL.D. 
Harvard and Edinburgh 

MEMBER OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 



NINTH EDITION 

THOROUGHLY REVISED 



PHILADELPHIA 

J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY 

London : 36 Southampton Street, Covent Garden 
1899 



■■ s i 



S«fl 



33197 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1871, by 

J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO., 
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington. 



Copyright, 1887, by J. B. Lippincott Company. 



Copyright, 1899, by S. Weik Mitchell. 
TWO OO^i€8 RECEIVED. 



Printed by J. B. Lippsncott Company, Philadelphia. 






PREFACE. 



T I'tHE rate of change in this country in edu- 



JL 



cation, in dress, and in diet and habits 



of daily life surprises even the most watchful 
American observer. It is now but twenty-five 
years since this little book was written as a 
warning to a restless nation possessed of an en- 
ergy tempted to its largest uses by unsurpassed 
opportunities. There is still need to repeat and 
reinforce my former remonstrance, but I am 
glad to add that since I first wrote on these 
subjects they have not only grown into impor- 
tance as questions of public hygiene, but vast 
changes for the better have come about in many 
of our ways of living, and everywhere common 
sense is beginning to rule in matters of dress, 
diet, and education. 

The American of the Eastern States and 

3 



4 PREFACE. 

of the comfortable classes* is becoming no- 
tably more ruddy and more stout. The alter- 
ation in women as to these conditions is most 
striking, and, if I am not mistaken, in Eng- 
land there is a lessening tendency towards 
that excess of adipose matter which is still 
a surprise to the American visiting England 
for the first time. 

I should scarcely venture to assert so posi- 
tively that Americans had obviously taken on 
flesh within a generation if what I see had 
not been observed by many others. It would, 
I think, be interesting to enter at length upon 
a study of these remarkable changes, but that 
were scarcely within the scope of this little 
book. 

S. Weir Mitchell. 

* Happily, a large class with us. 



WEAR AND TEAR. 

OR 

HINTS FOR THE OVERWORKED. 



"TV yTAJSTY years ago I found occasion to set 
-l*-*- before the readers of Lippincotfs Mag- 
azine certain thoughts concerning work in 
America, and its results. Somewhat to my 
surprise, the article attracted more notice than 
usually falls to the share of such papers, and 
since then, from numerous sources, I have 
had the pleasure to learn that my words of 
warning have been of good service to many 
thoughtless sinners against the laws of labor 
and of rest. I have found, also, that the 
views then set forth as to the peculiar diffi- 
culties of mental and physical work in this 

1* 5 



6 WEAR AND TEAR, 

country are in strict accordance with the per- 
sonal experience of foreign scholars who have 
cast their lots among us; while some of our 
best teachers have thanked me for stating, 
from a doctor's stand-point, the evils which 
their own experience had taught them to see 
in our present mode of tasking the brains of 
the younger girls. 

I hope, therefore, that I am justified in the 
belief that in its new and larger form my 
little tract may again claim attention from 
such as need its lessons. Since it was meant 
only for these, I need not excuse myself to 
physicians for its simplicity; while I trust that 
certain of my brethren may find in it enough 
of original thought to justify its reappearance, 
as its statistics were taken from manuscript 
notes and have been printed in no scientific 
journal. 

I have called these Hints Wear and Tear, 
because this title clearly and briefly points out 
my meaning. Wear is a natural and legiti- 
mate result of lawful use, and is what we all 
have to put up with as the result of years of 
activity of brair and body. Tear is another 
matter : it comes of hard or evil usage of 



OR HINTS FOR THE OVERWORKED. 7 

body or engine, of putting things to wrong 
purposes, using a chisel for a screw-driver, a 
penknife for a gimlet. Long strain, or the 
sudden demand of strength from weakness, 
causes tear. Wear comes of use; tear, of 
abuse. 

The sermon of which these words are the 
text has been preached many times in many 
ways to congregations for whom the Dollar 
Devil had always a more winning eloquence. 
Like many another man who has talked wearily 
to his fellows with an honest sense of what they 
truly need, I feel how vain it is to hope for 
many earnest listeners. Yet here and there 
may be men and women, ignorantly sinning 
against the laws by which they should live or 
should guide the lives of others, who will per- 
haps be willing to heed what one unbiased 
thinker has to say in regard to the dangers 
of the way they are treading with so little 
knowledge as to where it is leading. 

The man who lives an out-door life — who 
sleeps with the stars visible above him — who 
wins his bodily subsistence at first hand from 
the earth and waters — is a being who defies 
rain and sun, has a strange sense of elastic 



g WEAR AND TEAR, 

strength, may drink if he likes, and may 
smoke all day long, and feel none the worse 
for it. Some such return to the earth for the 
means of life is what gives vigor and develop- 
ing power to the colonist of an older race 
cast on a land like ours. A few generations 
of men living in such fashion store up a capi- 
tal of vitality which accounts largely for the 
prodigal activity displayed by their descendants, 
and made possible only by the sturdy contest 
with Nature which their ancestors have waged. 
That such a life is still led by multitudes of our 
countrymen serves to keep up our pristine force 
and energy. The country is continually contrib- 
uting vitality to the towns. Are we not merely 
using the interest on these accumulations of 
power, but also wastefully spending the capital ? 
From a few we have grown to millions, and 
already in many ways the people of the Atlantic 
coast present the peculiarities of an old nation. 
Have we lived too fast? The settlers here, as 
elsewhere, had ample room, and lived sturdily 
by their own hands, little troubled for the most 
part with those intense competitions which make 
it hard to live nowadays and embitter the daily 
bread of life. Neither had they the thousand 



OR HINTS FOR THE OVERWORKED. 9 

intricate problems to solve which perplex those 
who struggle to-day in our teeming city hives. 
Above all, educational wants were limited 
in kind and in degree, and the physical man 
and woman were what the growing state most 
needed. 

How much and what kind of good came 
of the gradual change in all these matters we 
well enough know. That in one and another 
way the cruel competition for the dollar, the 
new and exacting habits of business, the 
racing speed which the telegraph and railway 
have introduced into commercial life, the new 
value which great fortunes have come to pos- 
sess as means towards social advancement, and 
the overeducation and overstraining of our 
young people, have brought about some great 
and growing evils, is what is now beginning 
to be distinctly felt. I should like, therefore, 
at the risk of being tedious, to re-examine 
this question — to see if it be true that the 
nervous system of certain classes of Ameri- 
cans is being sorely overtaxed — and to ascer- 
tain how much our habits, our modes of work, 
and, haply, climatic peculiarities, may have to 
do with this state of things. But before ven- 



10 WEAR AND TEAR, 

turing anew upon a subject which may pos- 
sibly excite controversy and indignant com- 
ment, let me premise that I am talking chiefly 
of the crowded portions of our country, of 
our great towns, and especially of their upper 
classes, and am dealing with those higher 
questions of mental hygiene of which in gen- 
eral we hear but too little. If the strictures 
I have to make applied as fully throughout 
the land— to Oregon as to New England, to 
the farmer as to the business man, to the 
women of the artisan class as to those socially 
above them — then indeed I should cry, God 
help us and those that are to come after us! 
Owing to causes which are obvious enough, 
the physical worker is being better and better 
paid and less and less hardly tasked, while 
just the reverse obtains in increasing ratios 
for those who live by the lower form of brain- 
work; so that the bribe to use the hand is 
growing daily, and pure mechanical labor, as 
opposed to that of the clerk, is being " levelled 
upward" with fortunate celerity. 

Before attempting to indicate certain ways 
in which we as a people are overtaxing and 
misusing the organs of thought, I should be 



OR HINTS FOR THE OVERWORKED. \\ 

glad to have the privilege of explaining the 
terms which it is necessary to use, and of 
pointing out some of the conditions under 
which mental labor is performed. 

The human body carries on several kinds of 
manufacture, two of which — the evolution of 
muscular force or motion, and intellection with 
all moral activities — alone concern us here. 
We are somewhat apt to antagonize these two 
sets of functions, and to look upon the latter, 
or brain-labor, as alone involving the use or 
abuse of the nervous system. But every blow 
on the anvil is as distinctly an act of the 
nerve centres as are the highest mental pro- 
cesses. If this be so, how or why is it that 
excessive muscular exertion — I mean such as 
is violent and continued — does not cause the 
same appalling effects as may be occasioned by 
a like abuse of the nerve-organs in mental 
actions of various kinds? This is not an in- 
variable rule, for, as I may point out in the 
way of illustration hereafter, the centres which 
originate or evolve muscular power do some- 
times suffer from undue taxation; but it is 
certainly true that when this happens, the evil 
result is rarely as severe or as lasting as when 



12 WEAR AND TEAR, 

it is the organs of mental power that have 
suffered. 

In either form of work, physical or mental, 
the will acts to start the needed processes, and 
afterwards is chiefly regulative. In the case of 
bodily labor, the spinal nerve-centres are most 
largely called into action. Where mental or 
moral processes are involved, the active organs 
lie within the cranium. As I said just now, 
when we talk of an overtaxed nervous system 
it is usually the brain we refer to, and not the 
spine; and the question therefore arises, Why 
is it that an excess of physical labor is better 
borne than a like excess of mental labor? 
The simple answer is, that mental overwork 
is harder, because as a rule it is closet or 
counting-room or at least in-door work — seden- 
tary, in a word. The man who is intensely 
using his brain is not collaterally employing 
any other organs, and the more intense his 
application the less locomotive does he become. 
On the other hand, however a man abuses his 
powers of motion in the way of work, he is 
at all events encouraging that collateral func- 
tional activity which mental labor discourages : 
he is quickening the heart, driving the blood 



OR HINTS FOR THE OVERWORKED. 13 

through unused channels, hastening the breath- 
ins: and increasing the secretions of the skin 
— all excellent results, and, even if excessive, 
better than a too incomplete use of these 
functions. 

But there is more than this in the question. 
We do not know as yet what is the cost in 
expended material of mental acts as compared 
with motor manifestations, and here, therefore, 
are at fault; because, although it seems so 
much slighter a thing to think a little than to 
hit out with the power of an athlete, it may- 
prove that the expenditure of nerve material 
is in the former case greater than in the latter. 

When a man uses his muscles, after a time 
comes the feeling called fatigue— a sensation 
always referred to the muscles, and due most 
probably to the deposit in the tissues of 
certain substances formed during motor ac- 
tivity. Warned by this weariness, the man 
takes rest — may indeed be forced to do so; 
but, unless I am mistaken, he who is in- 
tensely using the brain does not feel in the 
common use of it any sensation referable to 
the organ itself which warns him that he has 
taxed it enough. It is apt, like a well-bred 



14 WEAR AND TEAR, 

creature, to get into a sort of exalted state 
under the stimulus of need, so that its owner 
feels amazed at the ease of its processes and 
at the sense of wide-awakefulness and power 
that accompanies them. It is only after very 
long misuse that the brain begins to have 
means of saying, "I have done enough;" and 
at this stage the warning comes too often in 
the shape of some one of the many symptoms 
which indicate that the organ is already talk- 
ing with the tongue of disease. 

I do not know how these views will be gen- 
erally received, but I am sure that the per- 
sonal experience of many scholars will decide 
them to be correct; and they serve to make 
clear why it is that men may not know they 
are abusing the organ of thought until it is 
already suffering deeply, and also wherefore 
the mind may not be as ruthlessly overworked 
as the legs or arms. 

"Whenever I have closely questioned patients 
or men of studious habits as to this matter, I 
have found that most of them, when in 
health, recognized no such thing as fatigue in 
mental action, or else I learned that what 
they took for this was merely that physical 



OR HINTS FOR THE OVERWORKED. 15 

sense of being tired, which arises from pro- 
longed writing or constrained positions. The 
more, I fancy, any healthy student reflects 
on this matter the more clearly will he recog- 
nize this fact, tljat ve^of^|^hen his brain 
is at its clearest, he pajj ftr because his 
back is weary, his eyes^P W or ^ s fi n g ers 
tired. 

This most important question, as to how a 
man shall know when he has sufficiently 
tasked his brain, demands a longer answer 
than I can give it here; and, unfortunately, 
there is no popular book since Ray's clever 
and useful " Mental Hygiene," and Feuchters- 
leben's "Dietetics of the Soul," both out of 
print, which deals in a readable fashion with 
this or kindred topics.* Many men are 
warned by some sense of want of clearness 
or ease in their intellectual processes. Others 
are checked by a feeling of surfeit or disgust, 

* See, now, " Brain- Work and Overwork," by H. C. Wood, 
M.D. ; also, " Mental Overwork and Premature Disease among 
Public and Professional Men," by Ch. K. Mills, M.D. ; also, 
11 Overwork and Sanitation in Public Schools, with Kemarks 
on the Production of Nervous Disease and Insanity," by Ch. 
K. Mills, M.D., — Annals of Hygiene, September, 1886 



16 WEAR AND TEAR, 

which they obey or not as they are wise or 
unwise. Here, for example, is in substance 
the evidence of a very attentive student of his 
own mental mechanism, whom we have to 
thank for maiy^ charming products of his 
brain. Like M £ scholars, he can scarcely 
say that he eveFiias a sense of " brain-tire," 
because cold hands and feet and a certain 
restlessness of the muscular system drive him 
to take exercise. Especially when working at 
night, he gets after a time a sense of disgust 
at the work he is doing. " But sometimes," 
he adds, " my brain gets going, and is to be 
stopped by none of the common plans of 
counting, repeating French verbs, or the like." 
A well-known poet describes to me the curious 
condition of excitement into which his brain 
is cast by the act of composing verse, and 
thinks that the happy accomplishment of his 
task is followed by a feeling of relief, which 
shows that there has been high tension. 

One of our ablest medical scholars reports 
himself to me as having never been aware of 
any sensation in the head, by which he could 
tell that he had worked enough, up to a late 
period of his college career, when, having 



OR HINTS FOR THE OVERWORKED. 17 

overtaxed his brain, he was restricted by his 
advisers to two or three hoars of daily study. 
He thus learned to study hard, and ever since 
has been accustomed to execute all mental 
tasks at high pressure under intense strain 
and among the cares of a great practice. All 
his mind-work is, however, forced labor, and it 
always results in a distinct sense of cerebral 
fatigue, — a feeling of pressure, which is eased 
by clasping his hands over his head; and also 
there is desire to lie down and rest. 

" I am not aware," writes a physician of dis- 
tinction, "that, until a few years ago, I ever 
felt any sense of fatigue from brain-work 
which I could refer to the organ employed. 
The longer I worked the clearer and easier 
my mental processes seemed to be, until, dur- 
ing a time of great sorrow and anxiety, I 
pushed my thinking organs rather too hard. 
As a result, I began to have headache after 
every period of intellectual exertion. Then I 
lost power to sleep. Although I have partially 
recovered, I am now always warned when I 
have done enough, by lessening ease in my 
work, and by a sense of fulness and tension 

in the head." The indications of brain-tire, 
b 2* 



18 WEAR AND TEAR, 

therefore, differ in different people, and are 
more and more apt to be referred to the 
thinking organ as it departs more and more 
from a condition of health. Surely a fuller 
record of the conditions under which men of 
note are using their mental machinery would 
be everyway worthy of attention. 

Another reason why too prolonged use of 
the brain is so mischievous is seen in a 
peculiarity, which is of itself a proof of the 
auto-activity of the vital acts of the various 
organs concerned in intellection. We sternly 
concentrate attention on our task, whatever it 
be; we do this too long, or under circum- 
stances which make labor difficult, such as 
during digestion or when weighted by anxiety. 
At last we stop and propose to find rest in 
bed. Not so, says the ill-used brain, now 
morbidly wide awake; and whether we will 
or not, the mind keeps turning over and over 
the work of the day, the business or legal 
problem, or mumbling, so to speak, some 
wearisome question in a fashion made useless 
by the denial of fall attention. Or else the 
imagination soars away with the unrestful 
energy of a demon, conjuring up an endless 



OR HINTS FOR THE OVERWORKED. 19 

procession of broken images and disconnected 
thoughts, so that sleep is utterly banished. 

I have chosen here as examples men whose 
brains are engaged constantly in the higher 
forms of mental labor; but the difficulty of 
arresting at will the overtasked brain belongs 
more or less to every man who overuses this 
organ, and is the well-known initial symptom 
of numerous morbid states. I have instanced 
scholars and men of science chiefly, because 
they, more than others, are apt to study the 
conditions under which their thinking organs 
prosper or falter in their work, and because 
from them have we had the clearest accounts 
of this embarrassing condition of automatic 
activity of the cerebral organs. Few thinkers 
have failed, I fancy, to suffer in this way at 
some time, and with many the annoyance is 
only too common. I do not think the subject 
has received the attention it deserves, even 
from such thorough believers in unconscious 
cerebration as Maudsley. As this state of 
brain is fatal to sleep, and therefore to need- 
ful repose of brain, every sufferer has a 
remedy which he finds more or less available. 
This usually consists in some form of effort 



20 WEAR AND TEAR. 

to throw the thoughts off the track upon 
which they are moving. Almost every literary 
biography has some instance of this difficulty, 
and some hint as to the sufferer's method of 
freeing his brain from the despotism of a ruling 
idea or a chain of thought. 

Many years ago I heard Mr. Thackeray say 
that he was sometimes haunted, when his work 
was over, by the creatures he himself had sum- 
moned into being, and that it was a good cor- 
rective to turn over the pages of a dictionary. 
Sir Walter Scott is said to have been troubled 
in a similar way. A great lawyer, whom I 
questioned lately as to this matter, told me 
that his cure was a chapter or two of a novel, 
with a cold bath before going to bed; for, 
said he, quaintly, "You never take out of a 
cold bath the thoughts you take into it." It 
would be easy to multiply such examples. 

Looking broadly at the question of the influ- 
ence of excessive and prolonged use of the 
brain upon the health of the nervous system, 
we learn, first, that cases of cerebral exhaus- 
tion in people who live wisely are rare. Eat 
regularly and exercise freely, and there is 
scarce a limit to the work you may get out 



OR HINTS FOR THE OVERWORKED. 21 

of the thinking organs. But if into the life 
of a man whose powers are fully taxed we 
bring the elements of great anxiety or worry, 
or excessive haste, the whole machinery begins 
at once to work, as it were, with a dangerous 
amount of friction. Add to this such con- 
stant fatigue of body as some forms of busi- 
ness bring about, and you have all the means 
needed to ruin the man's power of useful 
labor. 

I have been careful here to state that com- 
bined overwork of mind and body is doubly 
mischievous, because nothing is now more sure 
in hygienic science than that a proper alter- 
nation of physical and mental labor is best 
fitted to insure a lifetime of wholesome and 
vigorous intellectual exertion. This is prob- 
ably due to several causes, but principally to 
the fact that during active exertion of the 
body the brain cannot be employed intensely, 
and therefore has secured to it a state of 
repose which even sleep is not always com- 
petent to supply. There is a Turkish proverb 
which occurs to me here, like most proverbs, 
more or less true : " Dreaming goes afoot, but 
who can think on horseback?" Perhaps, too, 



22 WEAR AND TEAR, 

there is concerned a physiological law, which, 
though somewhat mysterious, I may again 
have to summon to my aid in the way of ex- 
planation. It is known as the law of Trevi- 
ranus, its discoverer, and may thus be briefly 
stated: Each organ is to every other as an 
excreting organ. In other words, to insure 
perfect health, every tissue, bone, nerve, 
tendon, or muscle should take from the blood 
certain materials and return to it certain 
others. To do this every organ must or 
ought to have its period of activity and of 
rest, so as to keep the vital fluid in a proper 
state to nourish every other part. This pro- 
cess in perfect health is a system of mutual 
assurance, and is probably essential to a 
condition of entire vigor of both mind and 
body. 

It has long been believed that maladies of 
the nervous system are increasing rapidly in the 
more crowded portions of the United States; 
but I am not aware that any one has studied 
the death-records to make sure of the accu- 
racy of this opinion. There can be no doubt, 
I think, that the palsy of children becomes 
more frequent in cities just in proportion to 



OR HINTS FOR THE OVERWORKED. 23 

their growth in population. I mention it 
here because, as it is a disease which does not 
kill but only cripples, it has no place in the 
mortuary tables. Neuralgia is another malady 
which has no record there, but is, I suspect, 
increasing at a rapid rate wherever our people 
are crowded together in towns. Perhaps no 
other form of sickness is so sure an indication 
of the development of the nervous tempera- 
ment, or that condition in which there are 
both feebleness and irritability of the nervous 
system. But the most unquestionable proof 
of the increase of nervous disease is to be 
looked for in the death statistics of cities. 

There, if anywhere, we shall find evidence 
of the fact, because there we find in exagger- 
ated shapes all the evils I have been defining. 
The best mode of testing the matter is to 
take the statistics of some large city which 
has grown from a country town to a vast busi- 
ness hive within a very few years. Chicago 
fulfils these conditions precisely. In 1852 it 
numbered 49,407 souls. At the close of 1868 
it had reached to 252,054. Within these years 
it has become the keenest and most wide- 
awake business centre in America. I owe to 



24 WEAR AND TEAR, 

the kindness of Dr. J. H. Rauch, Sanitary 
Superintendent of Chicago, manuscript rec- 
ords, hitherto unpublished, of its deaths from 
nervous disease, as well as the statement of 
each year's total mortality; so that I have it 
in my power to show the increase of deaths 
from nerve disorders relatively to the annual 
loss of life from all causes. I possess similar 
details as to Philadelphia, which seem to 
admit of the same conclusions as those drawn 
from the figures I have used. But here the 
evil has increased more slowly. Let us see 
what story these figures will tell us for the 
"Western city. Unluckily, they are rather dry 
tale-tellers. 

The honest use of the mortuary statistics of 
a large town is no easy matter, and I must 
therefore ask that I may be supposed to have 
taken every possible precaution in order not to 
exaggerate the reality of a great evil. Certain 
diseases, such as apoplexy, palsy, epilepsy, St. 
Vitus's dance, and lockjaw or tetanus, we all 
agree to consider as nervous maladies; con- 
vulsions, and the vast number of cases known 
in the death-lists as dropsy of the brain, 
effusion on the brain, etc., are to be looked 



OR HINTS FOR THE OVERWORKED. 25 

upon with more doubt. The former, as every 
doctor knows, are, in a vast proportion of 
instances, due to direct disease of the nerve- 
centres ; or, if not to this, then to such a con- 
dition of irritability of these parts as makes 
them too ready to originate spasms in response 
to causes which disturb the extremities of the 
nerves, such as teething and the like. This 
tendency seems to be fostered by the air and 
habits of great towns, and by all the agen- 
cies which in these places depress the health 
of a community. The other class of diseases, 
as dropsy of the brain or effusion, probably in- 
cludes a number of maladies, due some of 
them to scrofula, and to the predisposing 
causes of that disease ; others, to the kind of 
influences which seem to favor convulsive dis- 
orders. Less surely than the former class can 
these be looked upon as true nervous diseases; 
so that in speaking of them I am careful to 
make separate mention of their increase, while 
thinking it right on the whole to include in 
the general summary of this growth of nerve 
disorders this partially doubtful class. 

Taking the years 1852 to 1868, inclusive, it 
will be found that the population of Chicago 



26 WEAR AND TEAR, 

has increased 5.1 times and the deaths from 
all causes 3.7 times; while the nerve deaths, 
including the doubtful class labelled in the re- 
ports as dropsy of the brain and convulsions, 
have risen to 20.4 times what they were in 
1852. Thus in 1852, '53, and '55, leaving out 
the cholera year '54, the deaths from nerve 
disorders were respectively to the whole pop- 
ulation as 1 in 1149, 1 in 953, and 1 in 941; 
whilst in 1866, '67, and '68, they were 1 in 
505, 1 in 415.7, and 1 in 287.8. Still omitting 
1854, the average proportion of neural deaths 
to the total mortality was, in the five years 
beginning with 1852, 1 in 26.1. In the five 
latter years studied — that is, from 1864 to 
1868, inclusive — the proportion was 1 nerve 
death to every 9.9 of all deaths. 

I have alluded above to a class of deaths 
included in my tables, but containing, no 
doubt, instances of mortality due to other 
causes than disease of the nerve-organs. Thus 
many which are stated to have been owing to 
convulsions ought to be placed to the credit 
of tubercular disease of the brain or to heart 
maladies ; but even in the practice of medicine 
the distinction as to cause cannot always be 



OR HINTS FOR THE OVERWORKED. 27 

made; and as a large proportion of this loss 
of life is really owing to brain affections, I 
have thought best to include the whole class 
in my statement. 

A glance at the individual diseases which 
are indubitably nervous is more instructive 
and less perplexing. For example, taking the 
extreme years, the recent increase in apoplexy 
is remarkable, even when we remember that it 
is a malady of middle and later life, and that 
Chicago, a new city, is therefore entitled to a 
yearly increasing quantity of this form of death. 
In 1868 the number was 8.6 times greater than 
in 1852. Convulsions as a death cause had in 
1868 risen to 22 times as many as in the year 
1852. Epilepsy, one of the most marked of 
all nervous maladies, is more free from the 
difficulties which belong to the last-mentioned 
class. In 1852 and '53 there were but two 
deaths from this disease ; in the next four 
years there were none. From 1858 to '64, 
inclusive, there were in all 6 epileptic deaths: 
then we have in the following years, 5, 3, 11 ; 
and in 1868 the number had increased to 17. 
Passing over palsy, which, like apoplexy, in- 
creases in 1868, — 8.6 times as compared with 



23 WEAR AND TEAR, 

1852, and 26 times as compared with the four 
years following 1852, — we come to lockjaw, an 
unmistakable nerve malady. Six years out of 
the first eleven give us no death from this 
painful disease; the others, up to 1864, offer 
each one only, and the last-mentioned year 
has but . two. Then the number rises to 3 
each year, to 5 in 1867, and to 12 in 1868. 
At first sight, this record of mortality from 
lockjaw would seem to be conclusive, yet it 
is perhaps, of all the maladies mentioned, the 
most deceptive as a means of determining the 
growth of neural diseases. To make this clear 
to the general reader, he need only be told 
that tetanus is nearly always caused by me- 
chanical injuries, and that the natural increase 
of these in a place like Chicago may account 
for a large part of the increase. Yet, taking 
the record as a whole, and viewing it only 
with a calm desire to get at the truth, it is 
not possible to avoid seeing that the growth 
of nerve maladies has been inordinate. 

The industry and energy which have built 
this great city on a morass, and made it a 
vast centre of insatiate commerce, are now 
at work to undermine the nervous systems 



OR HINTS FOR THE OVERWORKED. 20 

of its restless and eager people,* with what 
result I have here tried to point out, chiefly 
because it is an illustration in the most con- 
centrated form of causes which are at work 
elsewhere throughout the land. 

The facts I have given establish the dis- 
proportionate increase in one great city of 
those diseases which are largely produced by 
the strain on the nervous system resulting 
from the toils and competitions of a com- 
munity growing rapidly and stimulated to its 
utmost capacity. Probably the same rule would 
be found to apply to other large towns, but I 
have not had time to study the statistics of any 
of them fully; and, for reasons already given, 
Chicago may be taken as a typical illustration. 

It were interesting to-day to question the later 
statistics of this great business-centre ; to see if 
the anwers would weaken or reinforce the con- 
clusions drawn in 1871. I have seen it anew of 
late with its population of 700,000 souls. It is 
a place to-day to excite wonder, and pity, and 



* I asked two citizens of this uneasy town — on the same 
day — what was their business. Both replied tranquilly that 
they were speculators ! 

3* 



30 WEAR AND TEAR, 

fear. All the tides of its life move with bustling 
swiftness. Nowhere else are the streets more 
full, and nowhere else are the faces so expres- 
sive of preoccupation, of anxiety, of excitement. 
It is making money fast and accumulating a 
physiological debt of which that bitter credi- 
tor, the future, will one day demand payment. 

If I have made myself understood, we are 
now prepared to apply some of our knowledge 
to the solution of certain awkward questions 
which force themselves daily upon the atten- 
tion of every thoughtful and observant physi- 
cian, and have thus opened a way to the dis- 
cussion of the causes which, as I believe, are 
deeply affecting the mental and physical health 
of working Americans. Some of these are due 
to the climatic conditions under which all work 
must be done in this country, some are out- 
growths of our modes of labor, and some go 
back to social habitudes and defective methods 
of early educational training. 

In studying this subject, it will not answer 
to look only at the causes of sickness and 
weakness which affect the male sex. If the 
mothers of a people are sickly and weak, the 
sad inheritance falls upon their offspring, and 



OR HINTS FOR THE OVERWORKED. 31 

this is why I must deal first, however briefly, 
with the health of our girls, because it is here, 
as the doctor well knows, that the trouble be- 
gins. Ask any physician of your acquaintance 
to sum up thoughtfully the young girls he knows, 
and to tell you how many in each score are 
fit to be healthy wives and mothers, or in 
fact to be wives and mothers at all. I have 
been asked this question myself very often, 
and I have heard it asked of others. The 
answers I am not going to give, chiefly be- 
cause I should not be believed — a disagree- 
able position, in which I shall not deliberately 
place myself. Perhaps I ought to add that the 
replies I have heard given by others were ap- 
palling. 

Next, I ask you to note carefully the ex- 
pression and figures of the young girls whom 
you may chance to meet in your walks, or 
whom you may observe at a concert or in the 
ball-room. You will see many very charming 
faces, the like of which the world cannot match 
— figures somewhat too spare of flesh, and, es- 
pecially south of Rhode Island, a marvellous 
littleness of hand and foot. But look further, 
and especially among New England young girls : 



32 WEAR AND TEAR, 

you will be struck with a certain hardness of line 
in form and feature which should not be seen 
between thirteen and eighteen, at least; and 
if you have an eye which rejoices in the tints 
of health, you will too often miss them on the 
cheeks we are now so daringly criticising. I 
do not want to do more than is needed of this 
ungracious talk: suffice it to say that multi- 
tudes of our young girls are merely pretty to 
look at, or not that; that their destiny is the 
shawl and the sofa, neuralgia, weak backs, and 
the varied forms of hysteria, — that domestic 
demon which has produced untold discomfort 
in many a household, and, I am almost ready 
to say, as much unhappiness as the husband's 
dram. My phrase may seem outrageously 
strong, but only the doctor knows what one 
of these self-made invalids can do to make a 
household wretched. Mrs. Gradgrind is, in 
fiction, the only successful portrait of this type 
of misery, of the woman who wears out and 
destroys generations of nursing relatives, and 
who, as Wendell Holmes has said, is like a 
vampire, sucking slowly the blood of every 
healthy, helpful creature within reach of her 
demands. 



OR HINTS FOR THE OVERWORKED. 33 

If any reader doubts my statement as to the 
physical failure of our city-bred women to 
fulfil all the natural functions of mothers, let 
him contrast the power of the recently im- 
ported Irish or Germans to nurse their babies 
a full term or longer, with that of the native 
women even of our mechanic classes. It is 
difficult to get at full statistics as to those of 
a higher social degree, but I suspect that not 
over one-half are competent to nurse their 
children a full year without themselves suffer- 
ing gravely. I ought to add that our women, 
unlike ladies abroad, are usually anxious to 
nurse their own children, and merely cannot. 
The numerous artificial infant foods now for 
sale singularly prove the truth of this latter 
statement. Many physicians, with whom I have 
talked of this matter, believe that I do not 
overstate the evil; others think that two-thirds 
may be found reliable as nurses; while the 
rural doctors, who have replied to my queries, 
state that only from one-tenth to three-tenths 
of farmers' wives are unequal to this natural 
demand. There is indeed little doubt that the 
mass of our women possess that peculiar ner- 
vous organization which is associated with great 



34 WEAR AND TEAR, 

excitability, and, unfortunately, with less phys- 
ical vigor than is to be found, for example, in 
the sturdy English dames at whom Hawthorne 
sneered so bitterly. And what are the causes 
to which these peculiarities are to be laid? 
There are many who will say that late hours, 
styles of dress, prolonged dancing, etc., are to 
blame; while really, with rare exceptions, the 
newer fashions have been more healthy than 
those they superseded, people are better clad 
and better warmed than ever, and, save in 
rare cases, late hours and overexertion in the 
dance are utterly incapable of alone explaining 
the mischief. I am far more inclined to be- 
lieve that climatic peculiarities have formed 
the groundwork of the evil, and enabled every 
injurious agency to produce an effect which 
would not in some other countries be so 
severe. I am quite persuaded, indeed, that 
the development of a nervous temperament 
is one of the many race-changes which are 
also giving us facial, vocal, and other peculi- 
arities derived from none of our ancestral 
stocks. If, as I believe, this change of tem- 
perament in a people coming largely from 
the phlegmatic races is to be seen most re- 



OR HINTS FOR THE OVERWORKED. 35 

markably in the more nervous sex, it will not 
surprise us that it should be fostered by many 
causes which are fully within our own control. 
Given such a tendency, disease will find in it 
a ready prey, want of exercise will fatally in- 
crease it, and all the follies of fashion will aid 
in the work of ruin. 

"While a part of the mischief lies with cli- 
matic conditions which are utterly mysterious, 
the obstacles to physical exercise, arising from 
extremes of temperature, constitute at least 
one obvious cause of ill health among women 
in our country. The great heat of summer, 
and the slush and ice of winter, interfere with 
women who wish to take exercise, but whose 
arrangements to go out-of-doors involve won- 
derful changes of dress and an amount of 
preparation appalling to the masculine creature 

The time taken for the more serious in- 
struction of girls extends to the age of nine- 
teen, and rarely over this. During some of 
these years they are undergoing such organic 
development as renders them remarkably sen- 
sitive. At seventeen I presume that healthy 
girls are as well able to study, with proper pre- 
cautions, as men; but before this time overuse, 



36 WEAR AND TEAR, 

or even a very steady use, of the brain is in 
many dangerous to health and to every prob- 
ability of future womanly usefulness. 

In most of our schools the hours are too 
many, for both girls and boys. From nine 
until two is, with us, the common school- 
time in private seminaries. The usual recess 
is twenty minutes or half an hour, and it is 
not as a rule filled by enforced exercise. In 
certain schools — would it were common! — ten 
minutes' recess is given after every hour; and 
in the Blind Asylum of Philadelphia this 
time is taken up by light gymnastics, which 
are obligatory. To these hours we must add 
the time spent in study out of school. This, 
for some reason, nearly always exceeds the 
time stated by teachers to be necessary; and 
most girls of our common schools and normal 
schools between the ages of thirteen and 
seventeen thus expend two or three hours. 
Does any physician believe that it is good for 
a growing girl to be so occupied seven or 
eight hours a day? or that it is right for her 
to use her brains as long a time as the me- 
chanic employs his muscles? But this is only 
a part of the evil. The multiplicity of studies, 



OR HINTS FOR THE OVERWORKED. 37 

the number of teachers, — each eager to get 
the most he can out of his pupil, — the severer 
drill of our day, and the greater intensity of 
application demanded, produce effects on the 
growing brain which, in a vast number of 
cases, can be only disastrous. 

My remarks apply of course chiefly to pub- 
lic school life. I am glad to say that of late 
in all of our best school States more thought 
is now being given to this subject, but we 
have much to do before an evil which is 
partly a school difficulty and partly a home 
difficulty shall have been fully provided against. 

Careful reading of our Pennsylvania reports 
and of those of Massachusetts convinces me that 
while in the country schools overwork is rare, 
in those of the cities it is more common, and that 
the system of pushing, — of competitive exami- 
nations, — of ranking, etc., is in a measure re- 
sponsible for that worry which adds a dangerous 
element to work. 

The following remarks as to the influence 
of home life in Massachusetts are not out of 
place here, and will be reinforced by what is to 
be said farther on by a competent authority as 
to Philadelphia: 



38 WEAR AND TEAR, 

" The danger of overwork, I believe, exists 
mainly, if not wholly, in graded schools, where 
large numbers are taught together, where there 
is greater competition than in ungraded schools, 
and where the work of each pupil cannot be 
so easily adjusted to his capacity and needs. 
And what are the facts in these schools? I 
am prepared to agree with a recent London 
School Board Report so far as to say that in 
some of our graded schools there are pupils 
who are overworked. The number in any 
school is, I believe, small who are stimulated 
beyond their strength, and the schools are few 
m which such extreme stimulation is encour- 
aged. When, with a large class of children 
whose minds are naturally quick and active, 
the teacher resorts to the daily marking of 
recitations, to the giving of extra credits for 
extra work done, to ranking, and to holding 
up the danger of non-promotion before the 
pupils; and when, added to those extra in- 
ducements to work, there are given by com- 
mittees and superintendents examinations for 
promotion at regular intervals, it would be 
very strange if there were not some pupils so 
weak and so susceptible as to be encouraged 



OR HINTS FOR THE OVERWORKED. 39 

to work beyond their strength. There is an- 
other occasion of overwork which I have 
found in a few schools, and that is the spend- 
ing of nearly all of the school time in recita- 
tion and putting off study to extra time at 
home. When, in a school of forty or more, pupils 
belong to the same class, and are not separated 
into divisions for recitation and study, there 
is a temptation to spend the greater part of 
the time in recitation which few teachers can 
resist; and if tasks are given, they have to be 
learned out of school or not at all. Pupils 
of grammar schools are known to feel obliged 
to study two or three hours daily from this 
cause at a time when they should be sleeping, 
or exercising in the open air. Frequently, 
however, it is not so much overwork as over- 
worry that most affects the health of the child, 
— that worry which may not always be traced 
to any fault of system or teacher, but which, 
it must be admitted, is too often induced by 
encouraging wrong motives to study. 

"In making up the verdict we must not for- 
get that others besides the teacher may be re- 
sponsible for overwork and overworry. The 
parents and pupils themselves are quite as 



40 WEAR AND TEAR, 

often to blame as are the teachers. An un- 
willingness on the part of pupils to review 
work imperfectly done, and a desire on the 
part of parents to have their children get into 
a higher class, or to graduate, frequently cause 
pupils to cram for examinations and to work 
unduly at a time when the body is least able 
to bear the extra strain. Again, children are 
frequently required to take extra lessons in 
music or some other study at home, thus de- 
priving them of needed exercise and recrea- 
tion, or exhausting nervous energy which is 
needed for their regular school work. 

" It will be observed that in this charge 
against parents I do not speak of those causes 
of ill health which really have nothing to do 
with overwork, but which are oftentimes for- 
gotten when a school-boy or girl breaks down. 
I allude to the eating of improper and un- 
wholesome food, to irregularity of eating and 
sleeping, to attendance upon parties and other 
places of amusement late at night, to smoking, 
and to the indulgence of other habits which 
tend to unduly excite the nervous system. For 
very obvious reasons these causes of disease 
are not brought prominently forward by the 



OR HINTS FOR THE OVERWORKED. 41 

attending physician, who doubtless thinks it 
safer and more flattering to his patrons to say 
that the child has broken down from hard 
study, rather than from excesses which are 
somewhat discreditable. While parents are 
clearly to blame for endangering health in the 
ways indicated, it may be a question whether 
the work required to be done in school should 
not be regulated accordingly; whether, in des- 
ignating the studies to be taken, and in as- 
signing lessons, there should not be taken into 
consideration all the circumstances of the pupil's 
life which, can be conveniently ascertained, even 
though those circumstances are most unfavor- 
able to school work and are brought about 
mainly through the ignorance or folly of 
parents. Of course there is a limit to such 
an adjustment of work in school, but with 
proper caution and a good understanding with 
the parents there need be little danger of ad- 
vantage being taken by an indolent child; nor 
need the school be affected when it is under- 
stood to be a sign of weakness rather than of 
favor to any particular pupil to lessen his 
work. Not unfrequently there are found other 

causes of ill health than those which I have 

4* 



42 WEAR AND TEAR, 

mentioned; such, for instance, as poor ventila- 
tion, overheating of the school-room, draughts 
of cold air, and the like ; not to speak of the 
annual public exhibition, with the possible 
nervous excitement attending it. All of these 
things are mentioned, not because they belong 
directly to the question of overwork, but be- 
cause it is well, in considering the question, 
to keep in mind all possible causes of ill health, 
that no one cause may be unduly emphasized."* 

In private schools the same kind of thing 
goes on, with the addition of foreign lan- 
guages, and under the dull spur of discipline, 
without the aid of any such necessities as 
stimulate the pupils of what we are pleased to 
call a normal (!) school. 

In private schools for girls of what I may 
call the leisure class of society overwork is of 
course much more rare than in our normal 
schools for girls, but the precocious claims of 
social life and the indifference of parents as 
to hours and systematic living needlessly add 
to the ever-present difficulties of the school- 

* Forty-ninth Annual Report of the Massachusetts Board 
of Education, p. 204 (John T. Prince). 



OR HINTS FOR THE OVERWORKED. 43 

teacher, whose control ceases when the pupil 
passes out of her house. 

As to the school in which both sexes are 
educated together a word may be said. Surely 
no system can be worse than that which com- 
plicates a difficult problem by taking two sets of 
beings of different gifts, and of unlike physio- 
logical needs and construction, and forcing 
them into the same educational mould. 

It is a wrong for both sexes. Not much 
unlike the boy in childhood, there comes a 
time when in the rapid evolution of puberty 
the girl becomes for a while more than the 
equal of the lad, and, owing to her conscien- 
tiousness, his moral superior, but at this era 
of her life she is weighted by periodical dis- 
abilities which become needlessly hard to con- 
sider in a school meant to be both home and 
school for both sexes. Finally, there comes a 
time when the matured man certainly surpasses 
the woman in persistent energy and capacity 
for unbroken brain-work. If then she matches 
herself against him, it will be, with some ex- 
ceptions, at bitter cost. 

It is sad to think that the demands of civil- 
ized life are making this contest almost un- 



44 WEAR AND TEAR, 

avoidable. Even if we admit equality of in- 
tellect, the struggle with man is cruelly unequal 
and is to be avoided whenever it is possible. 

The colleges for women, such as Vassar, are 
nowadays more careful than they were. In- 
deed, their machinery for guarding health while 
education of a high class goes on is admi- 
rable. What they still lack is a correct public 
feeling. The standard for health and endur- 
ance is too much that which would be normal 
for young men, and the sentiment of these 
groups of women is silently opposed to admit- 
ting that the feminine life has necessities which 
do not cumber that of man. Thus the un- 
written code remains in a measure hostile to 
the accepted laws which are supposed to rule. 

As concerns our colleges for young men 
I have little to say. The cases I see of break- 
down among women between sixteen and nine- 
teen who belong to normal schools or female 
colleges are out of all proportion larger than 
the number of like failures among young men 
of the same ages, and yet, as I have hinted, the 
arrangements for watching the health of these 
groups of women are usually better than such 
as the colleges for young men provide. The 



OR HINTS FOR THE OVERWORKED. 45 

system of professional guardianship at certain 
of our universities is an admirable exception, 
and at some other institution the physical 
examination on matriculation becomes of the 
utmost value, when followed up as it is in cer- 
tain of these schools by compulsory physical 
training and occasional re-examinations of the 
state of health, as at Amherst. 

I do not see why the whole matter could 
not in all colleges be systematically made part 
of the examinations on entry upon studies. It 
would at least point out to the thoughtful 
student his weak points, and enable him to do 
his work and take his exercise with some regard 
to consequences. I have over and over seen 
young men with weak hearts or unsuspected 
valvular troubles who had suffered from having 
been allowed to play foot-ball. Cases of cere- 
bral trouble in students, due to the use of de- 
fective eyes, are common, and I have known 
many valuable lives among male and female 
students crippled hopelessly owing to the fact 
that no college pre-examination of their state 
had taught them their true condition, and that 
no one had pointed out to them the necessity 
of such correction by glasses as would have 



46 WEAR AND TEAR, 

enabled them as workers to compete on even 
terms with their fellows. 

In a somewhat discursive fashion I have 
dwelt upon the mischief which is pressing to- 
day upon our girls of every class in life. The 
doctor knows how often and how earnestly he 
is called upon to remonstrate against this 
growing evil. He is, of course, well enough 
aware that many sturdy girls stand the strain, 
but he knows also that very many do not, 
and that the brain, sick with multiplied studies 
and unwholesome home life, plods on, doing 
poor work, until somebody wonders what is 
the matter with that girl ; or she is left to 
scramble through, or break down with weak 
eyes, headaches, neuralgias, or what not. I 
am perfectly confident that I shall be told 
here that girls ought to be able to study hard 
between fourteen and eighteen years without 
injury, if boys can do it. Practically, how- 
ever, the boys of to-day are getting their 
toughest education later and later in life, while 
girls leave school at the same age as they did 
thirty years ago. It used to be common for 
boys to enter college at fourteen : at present, 
eighteen is a usual age of admission at Har- 



OR HINTS FOR THE OVERWORKED. 47 

vard or Yale. Now, let any one compare the 
scale of studies for both sexes employed half 
a century ago with that of to-day. He will 
find that its demands are vastly more exacting 
than they were, — a difference fraught with no 
evil for men, who attack the graver studies later 
in life, but most perilous for girls, who are still 
expected to leave school at eighteen or earlier.* 
I firmly believe — and I am not alone in this 
opinion — that as concerns the physical future 
of women they would do far better if the 
brain were very lightly tasked and the school 
hours but three or four a day until they reach 
the age of seventeen at least. Anything, in- 
deed, were better than loss of health ; and if it 
be in any case a question of doubt, the school 
should be unhesitatingly abandoned or its hours 
lessened, as at least in part the source of very 
many of the nervous maladies with which our 
women are troubled. I am almost ashamed to 
defend a position which is held by many com- 
petent physicians, but an intelligent friend, who 
has read this page, still asks me why it is that 
overwork of brain should be so serious an 

* Witness Richardson's heroine, who was " perfect mis- 
tress of the four rules of arithmetic "1 



48 WEAR AND TEAR, 

evil to women at the age of womanly de- 
velopment. My best reply would be the ex- 
perience and opinions of those of us who are 
called upon to see how many school-girls are 
suffering in health ' from confinement, want of 
exercise at the time of day when they most 
incline to it, bad ventilation,* and too steady 
occupation of mind. At no other time of life 
is the nervous system so sensitive, — so irritable, 
I might say, — and at no other are abundant 
fresh air and exercise so important. To show 
more precisely how the growing girl is injured 
by the causes just mentioned would lead me to 
speak of subjects unfit for full discussion in 
these pages, but no thoughtful reader can be 
much at a loss as to my meaning. 

The following remarks I owe to the experi- 
ence of a friend,f a woman, who kindly permits 
me to use them in full. They complete what 

* In the city where this is written there is, so far as I 
know, not one private girls' school in a building planned 
for a school-house. As a consequence, we hear endless com- 
plaints from young ladies of overheated or chilly rooms. 
If the teacher be old, the room is kept too warm ; if she 
be young, and much afoot about her school, the apartment 
is apt to be cold. 

f Miss Pendleton. 



OR HINTS FOR THE OVERWORKED. 49 

I have space to add as to the matter of edu- 
cation, and deserve to be read with care by 
every parent and by every one concerned in 
our public schools. 

" There can be no question that the minds of 
growing girls are sometimes overtaxed; but, in 
my opinion, this is a vice of the age, and not pri- 
marily of the schools. I have found teachers 
more alive to it than parents or the general pub- 
lie. Upon interrogating a class of forty girls, of 
ages varying from twelve to fourteen, I found 
that more than half the number were conscious 
of loss of sleep and nervous apprehension before 
examinations; but I discovered, upon further 
inquiry, that nearly one-half of this class re- 
ceived instruction in one or two branches out- 
side of the school curriculum, with the inten- 
tion of qualifying to become teachers. I could 
get no information as to appetite or diet; all 
of the class, as the teacher informed me, being 
ashamed to give information on questions of 
the table. In the opinion of this teacher, 
nervousness and sleeplessness are somewhat 
due to studies and in-door social amusements 
in addition to regular school work ; but chiefly 
to ignorance in the home as to the simplest 



50 WEAR AND TEAR, 

rules of healthy living. Nearly all the girls 
in this class drink a cup of tea before leaving 
home, eat a sweet biscuit as they walk, hurried 
and late, to school, and nothing else until 
they go home to their dinners at two o'clock. 
All their brain-work in the school-room is 
done before eating any nourishing food. The 
teacher realized the injurious effects of the pres- 
ent forcing system, and suggested withdraw- 
ing the girls from school for one year between 
the grammar- and high-school grades. When I 
asked whether a better result would not be ob- 
tained by keeping the girls in school during this 
additional year, but relieving the pressure of 
purely mental work by the introduction through- 
out all the grades of branches in household 
economy, she said this seemed to her ideal, but, 
she feared, impracticable, not from the nature 
of schools, but from the nature of boards. 

"A Latin graduating class of seven girls, 
aged seventeen and eighteen years, stated that 
they do their work without nervousness, rest- 
lessness, or apprehension. 

" This, with other statistics, would seem to 
bear out your theory that after seventeen girls 
may study with much less risk to health. 



OR HINTS FOR THE OVERWORKED. 51 

" So far as I have observed, the strain or tear 
is chiefly in the case of girls studying to become 
teachers. These girls often press forward too 
rapidly for the purpose of becoming self-sup- 
porting at the age of eighteen. The bait of a 
salary, and a good salary for one entering upon 
a profession, lures them on; and a false sym- 
pathy in members of boards and committees 
lends itself to this injurious cramming. 

" Our own normal school,* which is doing 
an indispensable work in preparing a trained 
body of faithful, intelligent teachers, has suc- 
cumbed to this injurious tendency. We have 
here the high and normal grades merged into 
one, the period of adolescence stricken out of 
the girl's school life, and many hundreds of 
girls hurried annually forward beyond their 
physical or mental capacity, in advance of 
their physical growth, for the sake of those 
who cannot afford to remain in school one or 
two years longer. I say this notwithstanding 
the fact that this school is, in my opinion, 
one of the most potent agencies for good in 
the community. 

* Philadelphia. 



52 WEAR AND TEAR, 

44 Overpressure in school appears to me to be 
a disease of the body politic from which this 
member suffers; but it also seems to me that 
this vast school system is the most powerful 
agency for the correction of the evil. In the 
case of girls, the first principle to be recog- 
nized is that the education of women is a 
problem by itself; that, in all its lower grades 
at all events, it is not to be laid down exactly 
upon the lines of education for boys. 

44 The school system may be made a forceful 
agency for building up the family, and the 
integrity of the home is without doubt the 
vital question of the age. 

44 Edward Everett Hale, with his far spiritual 
sight, has discerned the necessity for restoring 
home training, and advocates, to this end, short 
school terms of a few weeks annually. It is 
probable that in the future many school de- 
partments will be relegated to the home, but 
the homes are not now prepared to assume 
these duties. 

44 When it was discovered that citizens must 
be prepared for their political duties the 
schools were opened; but the means so far 
became an end that even women were edu^ 



OR HINTS FOR THE OVERWORKED. 53 

cated only in the directions which bear upon 
public and not upon household economy. The 
words of Stein, that 'what we put into the 
schools will come out in the manhood of the 
nation afterward/ cannot be too often quoted. 
Let branches in household economy be con- 
nected with all the general as distinguished 
from normal-school grades, and we not only 
relieve the girl immediately of the strain of 
working with insufficient food, and of ac- 
quiring skill in household duties in addition 
to the school curriculum, we not only simplify 
and harmonize her work, but we send out in 
every case a woman prepared to carry this new 
influence into all her future life, even if a 
large number of these women should event- 
ually pursue special or higher technical 
branches; for we are women before we are 
teachers, lawyers, physicians, etc., and if we are 
to add anything of distinctive value to the world 
by entering upon the fields of work hitherto 
pre-empted by men, it will be by the essential 
quality of this new feminine element. 

"The strain in all work comes chiefly from 
lack of qualification by training or nature for 

the work in hand, — tear in place of wear. The 

6* 



54 WEAR AND TEAR, 

schools can restore the ideal of quiet work. 
They have an immense advantage in regu- 
larity, discipline, time. This vast system gives 
an opportunity, such as no private schools offer, 
for ascertaining the average work which is 
healthful for growing girls. It is quite possi- 
ble to ascertain, whether by women medical 
officers appointed to this end, or by the teachers 
themselves, the physical capacity of each girl, 
and to place her where this will not be ex- 
ceeded. Girls trained in school under such 
wise supervision would go out into life quali- 
fied to guard the children of the future. The 
chief cause of overwork of children at present 
is the ignorance of parents as to the injurious 
effects of overwork, and of the signs of its 
influence. 

u The first step toward the relief of over- 
pressure and false stimulus is to discard the 
pernicious idea that it is the function of the 
normal school to offer to every girl in the 
community the opportunity for becoming a 
teacher. This unwholesome feature is the one 
distinctive strain which must be removed from 
the system. It can be done provided public 
and political sentiment approve. The normal 



OR HINTS FOR THE OVERWORKED. 55 

school should be only a device for securing 
the best possible body of teachers. It should 
be technical. 

"Every teacher knows that the average girl 
of seventeen has not reached the physical, 
mental, or moral development necessary to 
enter upon this severe and high professional 
course of studies, and that one year is insuffi- 
cient for such a course. 

" Lengthen the time given to normal instruc- 
tion, — make it two years; give in this school 
instruction purely in the science of education; 
relegate all general instruction to a good high 
school covering a term of four years. In this 
as in all other progressive formative periods the 
way out is ahead. 

"It will be time enough to talk of doing 
away with a portion of the girls' school year 
when the schools have fulfilled their high mis- 
sion, when they have sent out a large body of 
American women prepared, not for a single 
profession, even the high feminine vocation of 
pedagogy, but equipped for her highest, most 
general and congenial functions as the source 
and centre of the home." 

I am unwilling to leave this subject without 



56 WEAR AND TEAR, 

a few words as to our remedy, especially as 
concerns our public schools and normal schools 
for girls. What seems to me to be needed most 
is what the woman would bring into our school 
boards. Surely it is also possible for female 
teachers to talk frankly to that class of girls 
who learn little of the demands of health from 
uneducated or busy or careless mothers, and 
it would be as easy, if school boards were what 
they should be, to insist on such instruction, 
and to make sure that the claims of matur- 
ing womanhood are considered and attended 
to. Should I be told that this is impracticable, 
I reply that as high an authority as Samuel 
Eliot, of Massachusetts, has shown in large 
schools that it is both possible and valuable. 
As concerns the home life, it is also easy to 
get at the parents by annual circulars enforcing 
good counsel as to some of the simplest hygi- 
enic needs in the way of sleep, hours of study, 
light, and meals. 

It were better not to educate girls at all 
between the ages of fourteen and eighteen, 
unless it can be done with careful reference 
to their bodily health. To-day, the American 
woman is, to speak plainly, too often physically 



OR HINTS FOR THE OVERWORKED. 57 

unfit for her duties as woman, and is perhaps 
of all civilized females the least qualified to 
undertake those weightier tasks which tax so 
heavily the nervous system of man. She is not 
fairly up to what nature asks from her as wife 
and mother. How will she sustain herself 
under the pressure of those yet more exact- 
ing duties which nowadays she is eager to 
share with the man? 

While making these stringent criticisms, I 
am anxious not to be misunderstood. The 
point which above all others I wish to make 
is this, that owing chiefly to peculiarities of 
climate, our growing girls are endowed with 
organizations so highly sensitive and impres- 
sionable that we expose them to needless dan- 
gers when we attempt to overtax them men- 
tally. In any country the effects of such a 
course must be evil, but in America I be- 
lieve it to be most disastrous.* 

As I have spoken of climate in the broad 
sense as accountable for some peculiarities of 

* Since I wrote this little book I have had reason to believe 
that some of the mischiefs of which I complain are in active 
operation in other lands than ours. 



58 WEAR AND TEAR, 

the health of our women, so also would I ad- 
mit it as one of the chief reasons why work 
among men results so frequently in tear as 
well as wear. I believe that something in 
our country makes intellectual work of all 
kinds harder to do than it is in Europe; and 
since we do it with a terrible energy, the 
result shows in wear very soon, and almost 
always in the way of tear also. Perhaps few 
persons who look for evidence of this fact at 
our national career alone will be willing to 
admit my proposition, but among the higher 
intellectual workers, such as astronomers, physi- 
cists, and naturalists, I have frequently heard 
this belief expressed, and by none so positively 
as those who have lived on both continents. 
Since this paper was first written I have been 
at some pains to learn directly from Europeans 
who have come to reside in America how this 
question has been answered by their experience. 
For obvious reasons, I do not name my wit- 
nesses, who are numerous; but, although they 
vary somewhat in the proportion of the effects 
which they ascribe to climate and to such 
domestic peculiarities as the overheating of our 
houses, they are at one as regards the simple 



OR HINTS FOR THE OVERWORKED. 59 

fact that, for some reason, mental work is more 
exhausting here than in Europe; while, as a 
rule, such Americans as have worked abroad 
are well aware that in France and in England 
intellectual labor is less trying than it is with 
us. A great physiologist, well known among 
us, long ago expressed to me the same opinion; 
and one of the greatest of living naturalists, 
who is honored alike on both continents, is 
positive that brain-work is harder and more 
hurtful here than abroad, — an opinion which is 
shared by Oliver Wendell Holmes and other 
competent observers. Certain it is that our 
thinkers of the classes named are apt to break 
down with what the doctor knows as cerebral 
exhaustion, — a condition in which the mental 
organs become more or less completely incar 
pacitated for labor, — and that this state of 
things is very much less common among the 
savans of Europe. A share in the production 
of this evil may perhaps be due to certain 
general habits of life which fall with equal 
weight of mischief upon many classes of busy 
men, as I shall presently point out. Still, 
these will not altogether account for the fact, 
nor is it to my mind explained by any of 



(50 WEAR AND TEAR, 

the more obvious faults in our climate, nor 
yet by our habits of life, such as furnace- 
warmed houses, hasty meals, bad cooking, or 
neglect of exercise. Let a man live as he 
may, I believe he will still discover that 
mental labor is with us more exhausting than 
we could wish it to be. Why this is I cannot 
say, but it is not more mysterious than the 
fact that agents which, as sedatives or exci- 
tants, affect the great nerve-centres, do this 
very differently in different climates. There 
is some evidence to show that this is also the 
case with narcotics; and perhaps a partial ex- 
planation may be found in the manner in which 
the excretions are controlled by external tem- 
peratures, as well as by the fact which Dr. 
Brown-Sequard discovered, and which I have 
frequently corroborated, that many poisons are 
retarded in their action by placing the animal 
affected in a warm atmosphere. 

It is possible to drink with safety in Eng- 
land quantities of wine which here would be 
disagreeable in their first effect and perilous 
in their ultimate results. The Cuban who 
takes coffee enormously at home, and smokes 
endlessly, can do here neither the one nor the 



OR HINTS FOR THE OVERWORKED. 61 

other to the same degree. And so also the 
amount of excitation from work which the 
brain will bear varies exceedingly with varia- 
tions of climatic influences. 

We are all of us familiar with the fact that 
physical work is more or less exhausting in 
different climates, and as I am dealing, or about 
to deal, with the work of business men, which 
involves a certain share of corporal exertion, 
as well as with that of mere scholars, I must 
ask leave to digress, in order to show that in 
this part of the country at least the work of 
the body probably occasions more strain than 
in Europe, and is followed by greater sense 
of fatigue. 

The question is certainly a large one, and 
should include a consideration of matters con- 
nected with food and stimulants, on which I 
can but touch. I have carefully questioned a 
number of master-mechanics who employ both 
foreigners and native Americans, and I am 
assured that the British workman finds labor 
more trying here than at home; while per- 
haps the eight-hour movement may be looked 
upon as an instinctive expression of the main 
fact as regards our working class in general. 



62 WEAR AND TEAR, 

A distinguished English scholar informs me 
that since he has resided among us the same 
complaints, as to the depressing effects of phys- 
ical labor in America, have come to him from 
skilled English mechanics. What share change 
of diet and the like may have in the matter I 
have not space to discuss.* 

Although, from what I have seen, I should 
judge that overtasked men of science are es- 
pecially liable to the trouble which I have 
called cerebral exhaustion, all classes of men 
who use the brain severely, and who have also 
— and this is important — seasons of excessive 
anxiety or of grave responsiblity, are subject 
to the same form of disease; and this I pre- 
sume is why we meet with numerous instances 
of nervous exhaustion among merchants and 

* The new emigrant suffers in a high degree from the 
same evils as to cookery which affect only less severely the 
mass of our people, and this, no doubt, helps to enfeeble 
him. The frying-pan has, I fear, a better right to be called 
our national emblem than the eagle, and I grieve to say it 
reigns supreme west of the Alleghanies. I well remember 
that a party of friends about to camp out were unable to 
buy a gridiron in two Western towns, each numbering over 
four thousand eaters of fried meats. 



OR HINTS FOR THE OVERWORKED. 63 

manufacturers. The lawyer and clergyman 
offer examples, but I do not remember to have 
seen many bad cases among physicians. Dis- 
missing the easy jest which the latter state- 
ment will surely suggest, the reason for this we 
may presently encounter. 

My note-books seem to show that manu- 
facturers and certain classes of railway officials 
are the most liable to suffer from neural ex- 
haustion. Next to these come merchants in 
general, brokers, etc. ; then less frequently 
clergymen; still less often lawyers; and more 
rarely doctors; while distressing cases are apt 
to occur among the overschooled young of 
both sexes. 

The worst instances to be met with are 
among young men suddenly cast into business 
positions involving weighty responsibility. I 
can recall several cases of men under or just 
over twenty-one who have lost health while 
attempting to carry the responsibilities of great 
manufactories. Excited and stimulated by the 
pride of such a charge, they have worked with 
a certain exaltation of brain, and, achieving 
success, have been stricken down in the 
moment of triumph. This too frequent prao- 



64 WEAR AND TEAR, 

tice of immature men going into business, es- 
pecially with borrowed capital, is a serious evil. 
The same person, gradually trained to naturally 
and slowly increasing burdens, would have been 
sure of healthy success. In individual cases 
I have found it so often vain to remonstrate 
or to point out the various habits which col- 
lectively act for mischief on our business class 
that I may well despair of doing good by a 
mere general statement. As I have noted 
them, connected with cases of overwork, they 
are these: late hours of work, irregular meals 
bolted in haste away from home, the want of 
holidays and of pursuits outside of business, and 
the consequent practice of carrying home, as 
the only subject of talk, the cares and successes 
of the counting-house and the stock-board. 
Most of these evil habits require no comment 
What, indeed, can be said ? The man who has 
worked hard all day, and lunched or dined 
hastily, comes home or goes to the club to con- 
verse — save the mark ! — about goods and stocks. 
Holidays, except in summer, he knows not, 
and it is then thought time enough taken from 
work if the man sleeps in the country and 
comes into a hot city daily, or at the best has 



OR HINTS FOR THE OVERWORKED. ();*"> 

a week or two at the sea-shore. This inces- 
sant monotony tells in the end. Men have 
confessed to me that for twenty years they had 
worked every day, often travelling at night or 
on Sundays to save time, and that in all this 
period they had not taken one day for play. 
These are extreme instances, but they are also 
in a measure representative of a frightfully 
general social evil. 

There comes to them at last a season of busi- 
ness embarrassment; or, when they get to be 
fifty or thereabouts, the brain begins to feel the 
strain, and just as they are thinking, " Now we 
will stop and enjoy ourselves," the brain, which, 
slave-like, never murmurs until it breaks out 
into open insurrection, suddenly refuses to work, 
and the mischief is done. There are therefore 
two periods of existence especially prone to those 
troubles, — one when the mind is maturing ; an- 
other at the turning-point of life, when the 
brain has attained its fullest power, and has left 
behind it accomplished the larger part of its 
best enterprise and most active labor. 

I am disposed to think that the variety of 

work done by lawyers, their long summer 

holiday, their more general cultivation, their 

6* 



66 WEAR AND TEAR, 

usual tastes for literary or other objects out 
of their business walks, may, to some extent, 
save them, as well as the fact that they can 
rarely be subject to the sudden and fearful re- 
sponsibilities of business men. Moreover, like 
the doctor, the lawyer gets his weight upon 
him slowly, and is thirty at least before it can 
be heavy enough to task him severely. The 
business man's only limitation is need of 
money, and few young mercantile men will 
hesitate to enter trade on their own account if 
they can command capital. With the doctor, as 
with the lawyer, a long intellectual education, a 
slowly-increasing strain, and responsibilities of 
gradual growth tend, with his out-door life, to 
save him from the form of disease I have been 
alluding to. This element of open-air life, I sus- 
pect, has a share in protecting men who in many 
respects lead a most unhealthy existence. The 
doctor, who is supposed to get a large share of 
exercise, in reality gets very little after he grows 
too busy to walk, and has then only the inci- 
dental exposure to out-of-door air. When this 
is associated with a fair share of physical ex- 
ertion, it is an immense safeguard against the 
ills of anxiety and too much brain-work. For 



OR HINTS FOR THE OVERWORKED. 67 

these reasons I do not doubt that the effects of 
our great civil war were far more severely felt 
by the Secretary of War and President Lincoln 
than by Grant or Sherman. 

The wearing, incessant cares of overwork, 
of business anxiety, and the like, produce 
directly diseases of the nervous system, and 
are also the fertile parents of dyspepsia, con- 
sumption, and maladies of the heart. How 
often we can trace all the forms of the first- 
named protean disease to such causes is only 
too well known to every physician, and their 
connection with cardiac troubles is also well 
understood. Happily, functional troubles of 
heart or stomach are far from unfrequent pre- 
cursors of the graver mischief which finally 
falls upon the nerve-centres if the lighter 
warnings have been neglected; and for this 
reason no man who has to use his brain en- 
ergetically and for long periods can afford to 
disregard the hints which he gets from attacks 
of palpitation of heart or from a disordered 
stomach. In many instances these are the 
only expressions of the fact that he is abusing 
the machinery of mind or body; and the 
sufferer may think himself fortunate that this 



68 WEAR AND TEAR, 

is the case, since even the least serious degrees 
of direct exhaustion of the centres with which 
he feels and thinks are more grave and are 
less open to ready relief. 

When affections of the outlying organs are 
neglected, and even in many cases where these 
have not suffered at all, we are apt to witness, 
as a result of too prolonged anxiety combined 
with business cares, or even of mere overwork 
alone, with want of proper physical habits as 
to exercise, amusement, and diet, that form of 
disorder of which I have already spoken as 
cerebral exhaustion; and before closing this 
paper I am tempted to describe briefly the 
symptoms which warn of its approach or tell 
of its complete possession of the unhappy 
victim. "Why it should be so difficult of re- 
lief is hard to comprehend, until we remembei 
that the brain is apt to go on doing its weary 
work automatically and despite the will of the 
unlucky owner; so that it gets no thorough 
rest, and is in the hapless position of a broken 
limb which is expected to knit while still in 
use. Where physical overwork has worn out 
the spinal or motor centres, it is, on the other 
hand, easy to enforce repose, and so to place 



OR HINTS FOR THE OVERWORKED. (39 

them in the best condition for repair. This 
was often and happily illustrated during the 
late war. Severe marches, bad food, and other 
causes which make war exhausting, were con- 
stantly in action, until certain men were doing 
their work with too small a margin of reserve- 
power. Then came such a crisis as the last 
days of McClellan's retreat to the James River, 
or the forced march of the Sixth Army Corps 
to Gettysburg, and at once these men suc- 
cumbed with palsy of the legs A few months 
of absolute rest, good diet, ale, fresh beef and 
vegetables restored them to perfect health. 

In all probability incessant use of a part 
flushes with blood the nerve-centres which 
furnish it with motor energy, so that exces- 
sive work may bring about a state of conges- 
tion, owing to which the nerve-centre becomes 
badly nourished, and at last strikes work. In 
civil life we sometimes meet with such cases 
among certain classes of artisans: paralysis of 
the legs as a result of using the treadle of the 
sewing-machine ten hours a day is a good ex- 
ample, and, I am sorry to add, not a very rare 
one, among the overtasked women who slave 
at such labor. 



70 WEAR AND TEAR, 

Now let us see what happens when the in- 
tellectual organs are put over-long on the 
stretch, and when moral causes, such as heavy 
responsibilities and over-anxiety, are at work. 

When in active use, the thinking organs 
become full of blood, and, as has been shown, 
rise in temperature, while the feet and hands be- 
come cold. Nature meant that, for their work, 
they should be, in the first place, supplied with 
food; next, that they should have certain in- 
tervals of rest to rid themselves of the excess 
of blood accumulated during their periods of 
activity, and this is to be done by sleep, and 
also by bringing into play the physical ma- 
chinery of the body, such as the muscles, — that 
is to say, by exercise which flushes the parts 
engaged in it and so depletes the brain. She 
meant, also, that the various brain-organs should 
aid in the relief, by being used in other direc- 
tions than mere thought ; and lastly, she desired 
that, during digestion, all the surplus blood of 
the body should go to the stomach, intestines, 
and liver, and that neither blood nor nerve- 
power should be then misdirected upon the 
brain : in other words, she did not mean that 
we should try to carry on, with equal energy, 



OR HINTS FOR THE OVERWORKED. 71 

two kinds of important functional business at 
once. 

If, then, the brain-user wishes to be healthy, 
he must limit his hours of work according to 
rules which will come of experience, and which 
no man can lay down for him. Above all, let 
him eat regularly and not at too long intervals. 
I well remember the amazement of a distin- 
guished naturalist when told that his sleepless- 
ness and irregular pulse were due to his fast- 
ing from nine until six. A biscuit and a glass 
of porter, at one o'clock, effected a ready and 
pleasant cure. As to exercise in the fresh air, 
I need say little, except that if the exercise can 
be made to have a distinct object, not in the 
way of business, so much the better. Nor 
should I need to add that we may relieve the 
thinking and worrying mechanisms by light 
reading and other amusements, or enforce the 
lesson that no hard work should be attempted 
during digestion. The wise doctor may haply 
smile at the commonplace of such directions, 
but woe be to the man who neglects them! 

When an overworked and worried victim 
has sufficiently sinned against these simple 
laws, if he does not luckily suffer from dis- 



72 WEAR AND TEAR, 

turbances of heart or stomach, he begins to 
have certain signs of nervous exhaustion. 

As a rule, one of two symptoms appears 
first, though sometimes both come together. 
Work gets to be a little less facile; this 
astonishes the subject, especially if he has 
been under high pressure and doing his tasks 
with that ease which comes of excitement. 
With this, or a little later, he discovers that 
he sleeps badly, and that the thoughts of the 
day infest his dreams, or so possess him as to 
make slumber difficult. Unrefreshed, he rises 
and plunges anew into the labor for which he 
is no longer competent. Let him stop here; 
he has had his warning. Day after day the 
work grows more trying, but the varied stimu- 
lants to exertion come into play, the mind, 
aroused, forgets in the cares of the day the 
weariness of the night season, and so, with 
lessening power and growing burden, he pur- 
sues his purpose. At last come certain new 
symptoms, such as giddiness, dimness of sight, 
neuralgia of the face or scalp, with entire 
nights of insomnia and growing difficulty in 
the use of the mental powers; so that to 
attempt a calculation, or any form of intel- 



OR HINTS FOR THE OVERWORKED. 73 

lectual labor, is to insure a sense of distress 
in the head, or such absolute pain as proves 
how deeply the organs concerned have suffered. 
Even to read is sometimes almost impossible; 
and there still remains the perilous fact that 
under enough of moral stimulus the man may 
be able, for a few hours, to plunge into busi- 
ness cares, without such pain as completely to 
incapacitate him for immediate activity. Night, 
however, never fails to bring the punishment; 
and at last the slightest prolonged exertion of 
mind becomes impossible. In the worst cases 
the scalp itself grows sore, and a sudden jar 
hurts the brain, or seems to do so, while the 
mere act of stepping from a curb-stone pro- 
duces positive pain. 

Strange as it may seem, much of all this 
may happen to a man, and he may still strug- 
gle onward, ignorant of the terrible demands he 
is making upon an exhausted brain. Usually, 
by this time he has sought advice, and, if his 
doctor be worthy of the title, has learned that 
while there are certain aids for his symptoms 
in the shape of drugs, there is only one real 
remedy. Happy he if not too late in discover- 
ing that complete and prolonged cessation from 



74 WEAR AND TEAR, 

work is the one thing needful. Not a week of 
holiday, or a month, but probably a year or 
more of utter idleness may be absolutely essen- 
tial. Only this will answer in cases so extreme 
as that which I have tried to depict, and even 
this will not always insure a return to a state 
of active working health. 

I am very far from conceding that the vehe- 
ment energy with which we do our work is 
due altogether to greed. We probably idle 
less and play less than any other race, and the 
absence of national habits of sport, especially 
in the West, leaves the man of business with 
no inducement to abandon that unceasing labor 
in which at last he finds his sole pleasure. He 
does not ride, or shoot, or fish, or play any 
game but euchre. Business absorbs him utterly, 
and at last he finds neither time nor desire for 
books. The newspaper is his sole literature ; 
he has never had time to acquire a taste for 
any reading save his ledger. Honest friendship 
for books comes with youth or, as a rule, not 
at all. At last his hour of peril arrives. Then 
you may separate him from business, but you 
will find that to divorce his thoughts from it 
is impossible. The fiend of work he raised no 



OR HINTS FOR THE OVERWORKED. 75 

man can lay. As to foreign travel, it wearies 
him. He has not the culture which makes 
it available or pleasant. Notwithstanding the 
plasticity of the American, he is now without 
resources. What then to advise I have asked 
myself countless times. Let him at least look 
-to it that his boys go not the same evil road. 
The best business men are apt to think that 
their own successful careers represent the lives 
their children ought to follow, and that the four 
years of college spoil a lad for business. In 
reality these years, be they idle or well filled 
with work, give young men the custom of play, 
and surround them with an atmosphere of cul- 
ture which leaves them with bountiful resources 
for hours of leisure, while they insure to them 
in these years of growth wholesome, unworried 
freedom from such business pressure as the suc- 
cessful parent is so apt to put on too youthful 
shoulders. 

Somewhat distracted by the desire to be 
brief, and yet to tell the whole story, I have 
sought, in what I fear is a very loose and 
disconnected way, to put in a new light some 
of the evils which are hurting the mothers of 
our race, and those which every day's experi- 



76 WEAR AND TEAR. 

ence teaches the doctor are gravely affecting 
the working capacity of numberless men. I 
trust I have succeeded in satisfying my readers 
that we dwell in a climate where work of all 
kinds demands greater precautions as to health 
than is the case abroad. We cannot improve 
our climate, but it is quite possible that we 
have not sufficiently learned to modify the 
conditions of labor in accordance with those 
of the sky under which we live. 

No student of the nervous maladies of 
American men and women will think I have 
overdrawn any part of the foregoing sketch. 
It would have been as easy, had such a course 
been proper, to tell the individual stories of 
youth, vigorous, eager, making haste to be 
rich, wrecked and made unproductive and de- 
pendent for years or forever; and of middle 
age, unable or unwilling to pause in the career 
of dollar-getting, crushed to earth in the horn 
of fruition, or made powerless to labor longer 
at any cost for those who were dearest. 

THE END. 



J.JN 7 W99 



